...will he ever win?

Weeell....if you weren't at Steve Worth's last night, TOO TOO BAD! You missed a chance to meet ace Twilight Zone writer, George Clayton Johnson (that's Steve on left and  George on the right, above). For readers who are unfamiliar with George, here's a yeoman introduction cribbed from Steve' blog, Animation Resources:

Mr. Johnson was one of the principal writers on Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone”, writing both stories and screenplays for such legendary episodes as “The Four of Us Are Dying”, “Kick the Can”, “A Game of Pool”, and “Nothing in the Dark”. He also was the writer of the first regular episode of Star Trek to air, “The Man Trap” and the feature films “Logan’s Run” (he co-wrote the novel the film was based on) and “Oceans 11″. He was part of a group of Southern California science fiction writers that included Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury and Charles Beaumont. He collaborated with Ray Bradbury on the story for “Icarus Montgolfier Wright”, an Academy Award nominated animated film produced by Format Films.


I came to the event with a bunch of questions for George, foremost of which was this: how does a dramatic writer fill in the details of a story without being boring? In George's Twilight Zone episode "A Game of Pool," the whole extended middle was a pool game. Now how do you make a thing like that interesting? 


The answer isn't obvious. I'd just seen the episode and there wasn't a single second where the film was less than fascinating, even though there were no fights, shouting matches, power outages or third characters. How did George keep the interest level so high? You're going to die when you hear what he said.


The answer in paraphrase was...personality...character friction...two appealing ideas in conflict...the gradual unveiling of an overriding great thought...and. of course, suspense about the outcome of the game and how the story's going to end.


Fine, I reply, but what kind of character conflict could possibly keep our interest for so long? One man's a seasoned pro and the other's a talented usurper. So what? What can you do with that, that hasn't been done a million times before?


George's answer was that I hadn't done my homework. I should have paid more attention to the human relationships on display in the street. It's not enough to characterize people as pro or usurper, or shy or extroverted. You have to try to understand why they're that way. Their outward actions are a manifestation of their inner ideas about the world. Exactly what are those ideas? What happens when those ideas are challenged? It's not anger, it's something more interesting. 


Holy Cow! When all those things come into play, the task of filling up the middle of the story seems like fun. In fact, the middle now becomes the most interesting part. Thanks, George! I'll never look at that problem the same way again!


BTW: are these theories relevant to animated comedy? Mmmmmm...maybe not exactly. Cartoon comedy has its own rules. But they're still very, very interesting, you have to admit.

February 05, 2012 10:54 PM

The pictures here are all from a different era. I couldn't find anything on the net to illustrate the particular modern fight I have in mind. Oh well, they're kind of interesting for their own sake.


Anyway, It's tough being a corner man in mixed martial arts. How do you stand out on TV and make a reputation? It's a job that everybody takes for granted...until now. I saw a fight on John's HD Net on Friday night where the corner man stole the show.



The man cornered for an African American guy...I wish I could remember the name. he was a terrific fighter, but had the handicap of being a gentle intellectual who'd rather be with his books. You could tell he deeply regretted the necessity of hurting other fighters.  He was like Ferdinand The Bull, if you know that story. The other guys on the bill all strutted in to the tune of gangster rap. This guy entered to classical music. I didn't recognize it, but it was something pastoral that suggested sniffing daisies in a meadow.


At the entrance to the ring his corner man, who was huge, turned around and began to insult the fighter. Right there on TV they got into a nose-to-nose shouting match. I'm not sure, but the corner man might even have slapped the fighter. The fighter got madder and madder, til he pushed the corner man aside and stomped into the ring, ready to tear apart anybody who got in his way. It looked to me like the corner man deliberately provoked him.

Like I said, the formerly gentle fighter was skilled, but his opponent was even better. At the round breaks the battered gentle guy would slink back to the corner where the derisive corner man would reinvigorate him by insulting him some more and throwing Gatorade in his face.

Regretfully the gentle man lost. I thought the whole drama was over, but there was one more act waiting to play out. His cocky opponent, the winner, came over to our guy's corner, put his arm around the corner man, and proceeded to chat the corner man up. I couldn't believe it! It looked like he was offering the corner man a job working for him. Our guy sat on the stool watching all this and was completely dumbfounded.

I know what you're thinking...that this was all staged to get a laugh. Maybe, but I don't think so. It looked like a real fight.

February 05, 2012 04:48 PM

When I was a kid shoe salesman was a high status job.


 The shoe salesmen were all well spoken and impeccably dressed. TV ads always portrayed them as consummate professionals. In some stores they even operated X ray machines called fluoroscopes which were specially designed for feet. I loved getting new shoes because that meant I got to look into the machine's viewer and watch my own skeletal feet.

Geez, that was dangerous radiation. I hope I don't wake up some morning with an extra head on my shoulders.


Parents had to be careful with money in those days, so they always got over-sized shoes that their kids could grow into. I guess that made the salesman's job easier.


Like a lot of kids in my time, I considered selling shoes as a possible career. Ads in magazines gave me the impression that only beautiful women bought shoes, and I was prepared to do my best for them.


I was aware of the hazard presented by dealing with beautiful legs all day. Even as a little kid I fully expected a lot of customers to throw themselves at me. I anticipated that I'd have to deflect their advances, and I was determined to do it with humor and savoir-faire. After all, a shoe salesman is a professional and must maintain a professional detachment.


I can't remember what changed my mind about selling shoes. Was it Bundy's horror stories about the job in "Married With Children?" No, that came much later. I guess I just got interested in other things, like being a pilot or a general....or a cartoonist.


 Occasionally I come across a veteran shoe salesman from the old days. These guys still dress like Cary Grant and still treat their customers as if they were lordly aristocrats. They still handle quality leather shoes as if they were marvels of technology and craftsmanship. I'm always tempted to ask them what it was like in the good old days. Ah, the stories they could tell!

February 04, 2012 02:50 AM

That's John Maynard Keynes above, the economist who popularized the idea that government intervention in the economy could prevent slumps and depressions. Keynes is one of the pillars of modern liberalism and progressivism.


That's Keynes' opposite above...Friedrich von Hayek, the Nobel Prize winning economist who believed that slumps and depressions are made worse by government intervention. Together with Mises, Hayek became one of the fathers of the modern libertarian and conservative movements.

The two men defined the economic battle of our time: whether governments should intervene in markets.


Now I know absolutely nothing about economics, but like most people that doesn't deter me from having an opinion about it. I'm a Hayek man (sort of)...though if you disagree, and have read a comic book on the subject recently, you could probably embarrass me in an argument.

If you're a Keynesian you'll probably love the book I'm reading now: "Keynes/Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics" by Keynesian Nicholas Wapshott. I like the way the author argues. At every step he digresses to explain what his opposite thinks, at least half the time fairly, and the biographical details go a long way in fleshing the ideas out.



If I were a book writer, that's the way I'd do it. You learn more from the intelligently laid-out clash of opposing ideas than from a book advocating a single idea. My own term for this type of thing is "conflict learning." This is one way I'd teach a class if I was a liberal arts teacher. I'd debate my opposite for half the class just to air the subject, then at the half way mark invite the class to participate. This could work, even for the discussion of literature.




But I digress. Keynes believed in government intervention in the economy to create demand.  Hayek believed that intervention would lead to a deepening of economic woes, which would create the need for still more intervention til we end up with a totalitarian state. Keynes thought that was silly. Look at Sweden and Switzerland...no totalitarian state there. Hayek pointed out the path taken by interventionist states like Germany and Italy in the thirties. That system was prevented from spreading only by war. I could go on, but you get the idea. The book is full of interesting back and forth like this.



Oddly, neither Hayek nor Keynes might recognize themselves in their modern disciples. Hayek is beloved by modern conservatives and libertarians, but he wrote an essay called, "Why I Am Not a Conservative," where he argued against nationalism, and laid out his belief that a culture should not be sentimentally attached to traditional ways of doing things. Keynes repudiated socialism as unworkable and believed that his system should only be applied at times of crisis when downturns in the business cycle brought about unemployment. Many of his modern disciples disagree and see government intervention as a constant. A fascinating book!




BTW: Who's the man in the cartoon (above)? He looks like both Keynes and Hayek.

Also BTW: Many, Many thanks to Kelly Toons and Jonathan Mastron for the great videos!!!!!!!! Both are worth watching.

February 03, 2012 05:36 PM

Groooan! It looks like I won't be able to avoid using a bad picture of myself (above) to illustrate this. Okay, here goes: I look a hundred years old in this picture! I look at this photo and imagine that there must be an IV stand and oxygen tanks just out of frame. How I wish the person who'd taken this had told me that when he took it. If I'd known, I could have struck a different pose, one that was more flattering.

February 02, 2012 05:48 PM

February 01, 2012 03:46 AM

What a headache this post turned out to be! This was intended to be an easy to do parody of an article in Look magazine, but when I tried to change the captions to make them funnier everything got buggered up. Oh, well.....

BTW: I just got an interesting comment from a British actor whose internet name is "Propeler." It regards a post I put up on August 11th called, "What Is the Purpose of Acting?" Here it is:

Eddie, I am a British actor, most of my career has been with the royal Shakespeare company and I work regularly on television and film. I have had a dream career so far. I have appeared regularly in londons west end, won awards for my stage work with the rsc and acted with dame judi dench, Patrick Stewart and Ian mckellen. But, I have lost all sense of joy or purpose in it. Your piece on the purpose of acting has totally reinspired me and effectively stopped me from retiring early. The job can feel so self indulgent but you have reminded me of what is great about what we do. I thank you sincerely

Wow! I'm speechless! I don't know what to say, except that it's wonderful to know that something I said was that helpful. Many thanks Propeler for the kind words.

The post Propeller commented on: http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/search? updated-max=2011-08-25T01:53:00-07:00&max-results=20

February 01, 2012 03:06 AM

Hey does anybody have this issue?

January 30, 2012 07:33 PM

Most female expressions are the same as men's (above). Nothing mysterious here, just the same expressions of joy and sadness that men have, only on a smoother, sexier, more easy to read surface.

But hold on...there's some expressions that don't get on charts like this. We all know that some expressions are unique to women, so unique in fact, that men have difficulty understanding them. Let's take a look at a few.........


 Okay, this expression for example....what the heck does it mean? My best guess is that it's saying, "I don't know whether I'm attracted to you or not, but here's a low intensity sexy look to keep you interested while I make up my mind."


Or this one (above). Is that a neutral expression? Is she irritated? Is she murderous? Is she daydreaming? She doesn't seem ecstatically happy, but that's about the best I can say.



What is this woman (above) saying? I feel silly for asking since she's obviously striking a model's pose and not trying to convey a real emotion...yet there is something else going on there, I just can't figure it out.


 Here's a girl (above) who's shocked by something unpleasant that she's just seen. The basic emotion is easy to read...what makes it noteworthy is that a secondary emotion seems seems to be overlayed on it. Taken all together she seems to be saying, "Oh, my God! My neighbor's been chopped up with an axe...and, er... doesn't my horrified expression look pretty?"

Man, you gotta feel sorry for women. They're what Norman Mailer called "prisoners of sex." They're doomed to be constant spectators on their own exterior lives. It's nice to be a guy, where you can tune out that self-awareness sometimes, and just relax.


How about this picture of a friend taken when she was a teenager? It's charming and doubly interesting when you realize that no man except Robert Pattinson would ever strike a pose like that. It's a girl thing. There's nothing wrong with that; actually I like the idea that girls have their own expressions. It's just interesting that expressions can be gender specific.

By the way, some girls have their own dialects too. In the late twenties and early thirties it was what we would call today, "Telephone Operator." Today it's "Valley Girl." Girls have their own textiles, color palettes, glasses, bottled water, cigarettes, recipes, candy, philosophy, books, cable channels, movies...even their own pencils and pens.....even their own science. It's a different culture.

January 30, 2012 05:08 PM

That's Ed Sullivan (above), the TV variety show host who first introduced The Beatles to American TV. Um, well actually it's George T., a Sullivan impersonator. I couldn't find a good picture of Ed, so this'll have to do.

Anyway, I'm a big Ed Sullivan fan. Poor Ed was the world's stiffest man. It's as if he had rigor mortis while still alive. Amazingly, he was able to use that to his advantage...on him it actually looked good!



Sullivan was the king of awkward. He never knew what to do with his arms. He was always folding and unfolding them and, when he got tired of that, he'd pull on his face or stand with his hands on his waist like Superman.

How do you like the impersonation Jerry does here (above)? The coat hanger shoulders, the "really bigs," the hands-glued-to-the-side when he walks...it's all there. How do you like the way Jerry plugs the sponsor's products?




Here (above) Jackie Mason further refines the Sullivan walk. The film begins badly, so you might want to skip the first 10 seconds. The sound's bad too, but don't let that deter you from watching. This is a brilliant parody.



Okay, one more impersonation (above), this time by Paul Terry. Do you see how the jacket rides up when he puts his hands on his waist? That's because the arm holes are cut low, so all the shoulder padding is pushed up when he lifts his arms. My "Wrinkle Jacket" does that. I did a whole YouTube video about it.

January 30, 2012 05:06 PM

Here's (above) some men's fashions that might be fun to draw. The first is from Life magazine circa 1949. Life liked this style, and so do I. Thin people look great in over-size clothes.


Here's Gerry Mulligan in profile (above), looking like he was drawn by Wally Wood.

January 28, 2012 06:32 AM

You must think I'm nuts for reposting these two videos so soon after I'd posted them before. I'm doing it because I really do have something new to say about them. They've pointed me in a new direction and I'm so happy about it that I can barely contain myself.

What I see in them is a personal style of acting that's been simmering in my head for a long time. I'm picturing how this live action style would look in animation. If I could draw it the way I act it out, then I'd have a style that would be completely my own. Isn't that what every artist prays for...a unique style?



To see what I see in this video (above) imagine the roles of the little girl and the stern schoolmaster combined in one person. I picture a little girl who obsessively acts out what other people say to her, so there's lots of opportunities for back and forth acting in the same person. I love the idea of writing for the acting, something that few animation writers do.  If you want to see what I mean, watch the video from 4:10 to 6:05.

On a different but related topic, I wonder why animation took the path it did, where animators learn general skills then apply those skills in whatever way their employer directs them. That's a good plan for most animation, but does it all have to be done that way?

Why can't I have a character that I animate particularly well, and shop him (or variants of him) around to the studios for use in their own projects? The studio would own the variant of my character that I do for them, but I could animate other variants for other studios. It's as if Clark Gable were a free agent who played many roles for many bosses, but was always recognizably Clark Gable. Does that make sense? Am I explaining it right?

I told this to John and he thought the idea was completely hair-brained, just the dumbest thing he'd ever heard. In his view having an independent artist come in would undermine the director's vision and make it difficult for other animators and designers to get on the same track. Maybe, but in my view John's putting too much emphasis on the independence of the animator. Clark Gable still took direction wherever he went, and so would my hypothetical artist.  Anyway, I wouldn't recommend this way of working to John because the way he does things made him the funniest animation director of his time. Why mess with something that works?

Mike Barrier stirred up a big controversy when he suggested something similar to what I'm saying here. You should have seen the letters he got! People were outraged. Me...I think there's something in it.

January 26, 2012 03:54 PM

http://johnkdesign.blogspot.com/Hey folksI am putting together a new blog site just for my design work - mostly from commercials and short spots.That image above is a layout from Rex Hackelberg's fancy designs.Take a gander if you are interested...

January 25, 2012 09:58 PM

MORE ABOUT THE PRECIOUS TALES OF CHILDHOOD INNOCENCE

January 20, 2012 08:03 PM

January 18, 2012 07:05 PM

Everybody loves a beautiful face, but be honest...don't you love pretty faces (above) more?



Beautiful is for magazine covers and the movies. Pretty is accessible. It's what you find in the real world if you're lucky.



Pretty entitles the possessor to giggle and be fun to be with.


Of course pretty women can have flaws just like anyone else. I'll bet the pretty girl above has a depressive disorder.


Here's (above) a pretty woman that strikes me as positively dangerous. Men would be well advised to walk the other way, but it would take an exceptional man to do that.

January 18, 2012 04:23 PM

Thinking about the opening back shot in "Miracle on 34th Street" (see the previous post) got me thinking about the subject of back shots in general. I'm a big fan of back shots (actually back acting, not just isolated poses) in live action, but you don't see them much in animation. That's a shame. Back shots are funny. Where would "The people of Walmart" site be without back shots like the one above?



I understand why animation people avoid them.  You can't easily study yourself in a mirror when you're drawing the back. You could draw somebody else's back, but they're not likely to act the scene right. I guess you could act it out yourself in front of a digital camera and play it back.

 I wonder how the dancers in the video above did it. How did they know how their dance would look to us? That's a nice dance, isn't it? 'Very effective from behind.


I can't find any ready-made clips of good animated back acting, which is what I meant to discuss. I can't even find any good live action reference for it, apart from Chaplin. I'll return to this subject later when I have better visuals.

Back acting is different than front acting. It's not just a question of making good silhouettes...back acting is more about timing and context. You have to make the audience delight in imagining what the face they can't see is thinking and doing.

Oh well, I have plenty of back-of-the-head reference. I'll talk about that. For me, back of the head means big ears (above), whether the person has them in front or not.





A good back of the head (above) is a thing of beauty, even on a guy. The two dots aren't mine.




I love over-the-shoulder shots, especially when the actor facing front has an extended acting scene. Laying bare your emotions to an impassive lump of hair and tweed in the foreground strikes me as funny. I tried it out in this video from a couple of years ago.

BTW, The best acting moments here come close to what I would have put into similar scenes if I'd been an animator working on an animated film. I really need to assemble a small reel of rough animation showing how I would animate characters using my own style of acting.

January 16, 2012 10:35 PM

Gee, I couldn't finish this post (above) about date rape before it was time to rush off to Steve's place to meet...in person...a wonderful screenwriter, George Clayton Johnson. It was a terrific night! I'll tell you all about it after I get some sleep, I'm just too... sleepy......to..........write..................

January 15, 2012 05:37 PM

I created this brief demo on how the Posebook app works on the smaller smart phone devices. works on iPhone, iPad, android, kindle fire and itouch.

January 14, 2012 08:13 PM

OUCH! I scratched my lip on the French Press I was holding, and the computer wouldn't let me retake the shot. Oh, well. The girl in the background is my assistant chef, Magnolia.

Anyway....

GOOD MORNING!!! I don't know about you, but I'm going to have a cup of coffee...a faux cafe latte, actually...made The Theory Corner way. What way is that? Read on!

The Theory Corner way uses a French Press, a milk frother and a bean grinder. None of this stuff costs very much, and pressed coffee doesn't take long to make.



Okay, you put the water on to boil. Lots of people use hippie water (bottled water) but I use filtered tap water. Nobody in LA needs to use bottled water in the winter months, because our water in that time of year comes from the High Sierras, and is top quality. During the Summer we buy water from Nevada, and that's murky, so if you're from Southern California and you feel you must buy bottled water, then that's the time to do it.


Anyway, while the water's boiling you grind your coffee beans in one of those little counter top grinders like the one pictured above. I like Starbucks coffee, French Roast Bold, Whole Bean. You can get Starbucks brand coffee at the supermarket. Grind the beans "coarse," which takes about 9 seconds.




The water hasn't come to a boil yet, so you can get started on the milk froth. I recommend buying a frother (pictured above, on the right...on the left is the French Press) but if you don't have one, just put some milk in a jar, shake it vigorously, and put it in the microwave for about a minute. Now you have milk froth.



Put the milk aside, and add the ground coffee to the French Press, along with a tiny pinch of salt, some sugar, and maybe a drop of vanilla extract. Pour in the boiling water. At the 1/5  mark stop and stir the coffee and water. [Magnolia's doing it wrong here...the idea is to stir only when the level is very low]. Never stir it again after this. Pour in the rest of the boiling water and let it all steep for four minutes: no more, no less. At exactly four minutes, press the plunger down slowly...about thirty seconds for the whole plunge.

Now you're ready to pour the coffee into a cup. I put a little froth on the bottom, beneath the coffee, and the rest on top. A lot of people prefer to have all the froth on top. Add some whipped cream and cinnamon or nutmeg and you're done. Maybe eat a piece of banana bread with it. Delicious...but it doesn't stay warm very long.

A video to help you get started:



Alton Brown uses a burr grinder. One of these days I might get one, but my humble little blade grinder works so well that I see no reason to change.

January 12, 2012 04:29 PM

This (above) is Rocinba, a slum on a mountain in Rio de Janeiro. I got interested in the place because it was the locale for an action film I just saw on DVD, called "Fast Five." Yeah, it's a Vin Diesel film. I'm not a fan of the man, but this one worked for me (well, sort of...you have to forgive a lot). It made me want to visit Rocinba for real. Geez, I'd probably get killed there.

January 12, 2012 04:11 PM

Which do you prefer: the old 1947 version of "Miracle on 34th Street," or the newer 1994 version? It's not a fair comparison because the older version had a bigger budget and some of the best stars and technicians of the day. Good writing, too. Even so, comparison is still possible.

I maintain that the biggest advantage the old version had was a philosophical one. People in those days had a more interesting way of seeing the world. We see things through a depressing Post Modern filter, or at least we did back in 1994 when the remake was made.

Let's take a look at some examples.....


Here's the start of the 1947 version: the titles are superimposed over a traveling backshot of Santa walking along Manhattan streets.  Introducing a robust, confident character with a backshot is a great way to create suspense, and the immersion in the life of the city alerts us to the film's subtext, which is that the modern world (and specifically New York) is a wonderful place to live.


The titles finish and Santa, who we'd only seen from the back til now, rounds a corner and stops to kibbitz when a shopkeeper goofs up his reindeer display. The back and forth between the two men establish Santa's personality. It works fine.


Now here's (above) the 1994 version. It starts with a frontal shot of Santa walking down a single street. The shot is made with a long lens, which flattens the background and robs it of its character.  No reveal, no subtext, and no color. Why is everything brown? I understand that it's cheaper to shoot this way, but is this really the best the director could do? What went wrong?

What went wrong is that the producer handed off a sentimental 40s story to an unsentimental Post Modern director. Unlike Woody Allen, the director just couldn't bring himself to cast New York in a positive light.

January 12, 2012 03:46 PM

I forgot to say that all this took place in the Gene Autry Museum, and I gradually made my way to the area where the exhibits were. What I'd hoped to see was their retro boys bedroom from the 50s, and I was not disappointed.

Holy Mackerel! There it was, the cowboy bed I had when I was a little kid! The chenille bedspread with embroidered lariat thrower,  the wheel headboard...I almost broke into tears. What was missing was the arsenal of cool plastic guns that every kid had in those days. No kid would dream of leaving the house without packing. You needed a Derringer water pistol at the very least.

January 08, 2012 06:49 AM

Classical figure drawing (above) is helpful for an artist, no doubt about it. It's indispensable, even for cartoonists.


The problem is, that this kind of drawing disciplines an artist to think of the body in terms of beautiful shapes and forms. That's important, of course, but cartoonists are like baggy pants comedians. We also have to think of the body as a colony of mismatched and uncooperative parts, which are generally an embarrassment to its owner.

So, sure, cartoonists need classical figure drawing, but we also need practice in drawing figures that are more earthy and ignorant.


If you were teaching figure drawing to cartoonists what kind of models would you hire? Me, I'd choose funny models, like the girl above. She's a real country cyclone of a woman, straight out of Dogpatch. It doesn't get more earthy than this.


Geez, what a find! Every time I look at her (above) whole stories pop into my mind.
A model like this, with an expressive face, would probably work best in a small class of not more than fifteen students.





For a model like this woman I'd say the ideal ratio of draped to undraped poses should be 50/50. You have to see her undraped to get an idea of what kind of structure adds up to a body like that, but draped is the only way you'll get the cool story ideas.


I'd choose models who were ham actors, and that kind of acting requires a loose story of some sort, something visual that's fun to act out.



It seems to me that the three most useful male types for a cartoonists to draw are Mr. Meeks, Leading Men (above, left) and Lumoxes. Fortunately Mr. Meeks and Lumoxes are abundant, but Leading Men are a rare type, very hard to find.

These three types should always be draped, with the Leading Man wearing only a bathing suit.


The ideal cartoony model would have been the late Imogene Coca, always draped. She was a genius actor and undraped would have broken the spell.

Physical comedians make great cartoon models, but if they're not used to doing it the poses should probably be short.



The blonde bombshell (above) is an absolute necessity for many comedic drawing sessions. The model would have to be someone worldly who looks good in a fuzzy bikini. Petite and wholesome types are fun to draw too, but not in the same session.

Hmmm....I think I'd team up this kind of woman with a Mr. Meek or a Leading Man. This kind of model would have to be frequently undraped in order to avoid a rebellion among the male students.


It would be great if a bombshell could be found who was also a dancer. If the budget permitted, I'd team her up with a sideman or two who could also dance.

In a case like this the instructor would serve as ersatz director and choreographer. It sounds complicated but I've worked with this kind of model before and, believe it or not, it comes together quickly and smoothely when the instructor makes it fun for the models.


After each new pose is settled on the cartoonist instructor might do a quick sketch of it on a large chalkboard. Seeing how an instructor organizes the shapes and spaces, and exaggerates for humor might help students who have trouble with things like that. After he does that, the instructor might make himself available for one-to-one teaching.

This woman's costume (above) is nice and cartoony: a big fluff ring to emphasize the hips, and a slit gown to empasize the legs.

January 07, 2012 05:04 PM

He comes under the influence of a lot of other artists in 1902, possibly including Windsor McKay (above).


Now HERE'S (above) an interesting strip! It looks like something Milt Gross might have done, or maybe the young Sterrett.  My source attributed this to Herriman, with a date of 1903, but I can't remember where I got the picture from, so I can't check it. If Herriman did draw this then it seems fair to say that both Gross, Sterrett, Barks and others were influenced by this strip, and Herriman the copier of others transformed during this period in to Herriman, whom others copy.

Gee, I got to say "whom."

I'm aware that Gross fans will find this connection between Herriman and Gross to be shocking. I'm not a historian, so if I'm wrong I hope a reader will let me know.


Somewhere in this period Herriman began to experiment with a scratchy pen and ink style. You see it in some of Herriman's "Baron Bean" drawings. I'm guessing that he got it from Bud Fisher, who did Mutt and Jeff.

I wonder if Kurtzman was influenced by this strip. Some of the Baron Bean sketches (not shown) look like Kurtzman's could have drawn them.


By 1907 (if not earlier) Herriman had perfected yet another style (above). Maybe it came out of the political cartoons he was doing in in 1904 and 5. This is my hands down favorite Herriman
.

With Krazy Kat, Herriman's pen and ink style evolved even farther, Here the scratchy, funny lines appear slightly liquid, as if they were brushed on. Were they? I don't think so. Maybe he smeared his ink lines with a little benzine. Or maybe the lines look liquid because they weren't photocopied right. I wish I knew.

January 07, 2012 04:07 PM

Are People always asking you to "friend" them on a million social media sites that promise you rewards of eternal life, love and great jobs? Someone got me to sign up for "Linked In" about 4 years ago and it has not ever gotten me any work. All the work I get is from people who are already familiar with my stuff and they call or email me directly. I think my job description is too simple: "I make

January 06, 2012 02:48 AM

Is it too late to post a Christmas card?  Here's one (above) that I never finished. I just couldn't get enough time in the days before Christmas. The caricature of me is from the sidebar. John K drew it and I redrew it.

January 02, 2012 08:25 AM

I just watched a terrific Netflix documentary called "I Like Killing Flies" about Shopsin's, a hole-in-the-wall Greenwich Village restaurant that's run by an eccentric cook who's famous for kicking people out when they don't obey "The Rules."

What are The Rules? Only the owner knows, he and a few regulars. One of those rules is the subject of this post: The Party of Five Rule. A New York poet named Robert Hershon wrote a poem about this rule, and it's a falling down classic. I'm going to  memorize it. See what you think....

December 30, 2011 03:39 AM

Yeah, I know...these are the songs I put up every year at this time, and Mahalia Jackson's "O Holy Night" always tops the list. So shoot me...I love this stuff.











This (above) is done by the St. Thomas Children's Choir. Is that the same Church that we associate with Bach?




'Not the best version (above), I admit, but it's interesting to hear this piece sung more simply than it usually is. The title says the singer is Pavarotti, but is this really him?







My kids loved this Chipmunk song (above), and they played it over and over and over. It drove my wife nuts. One year she deliberately "lost" it, and the tearful kids made me go out into the freezing night to find another copy.



I just watched this (above) and it was buried under a clutter of annoying advertising. Sigh! What can we do? They've got us over a barrel. The video is too good to miss!

December 30, 2011 01:27 AM

Wally Wood worked on a hipster version of "The Night Before Christmas." I don't have the poem at hand, but I have these three illustrations (above and below) to remind us of what a knack Wood had for modernism.

Wood would have made a terrific architect. That fireplace (above) is beautiful, and the tree that spans two floors is pretty neat. I love the brickwork in the foreground and the idea of a mat-framed print to set it off. I love how the whole place is on levels. What do you think of the cheetah skin beret on the guy on the lower right?


Here (above) are beatnik children all snug in their beds while visions of Abstract Expressionism dance in their heads. Being the kids of cool parents they naturally wear headphones and dark glasses to bed, and have little goatees.

Boy, even Santa's reindeer are hip!


That's all I had to say about Wood. How about a few non-Wood pictures to round the post out?

What do you think of this photo (above) from the Christmas sequence of "Meet Me in St. Louis?" I get sentimental when I see pictures like this. Imagine how great Christmas would be if you had this many kids...okay maybe half this number, say...five or six. I had two and it definitely wasn't enough.


Bored Santas (above) are a whole genre of photography.


So are kids recoiling in horror from Santa.


Above, a good card to send a tall friend.


Can't afford a Christmas tree?


Surprisingly, some modern-day hipsters (above) are pretty good purveyors of the Christmas spirit. I guess they have a flair for design and this is a holiday that rewards that. Come to think of it, Halloween is a haven for designers too.  The entire Fall and early Winter is a playground for artsy people like us.

Thinking about that reminds me of why I like Christmas so much. It's a time of the year that's steeped in profound tradition and sentiment, and it's simultaneously a fun celebration that's always trying to re-invent itself.

December 30, 2011 01:21 AM

Cartoon characters should live in homes that reflect their professions. They should speak and act the way people in their profession speak and act. Everybody should be visibly attached to a profession, even if that profession is loafer.

December 30, 2011 12:57 AM

I found a bunch of old model sheets from Stimpy's Pregnant. I thought about spinningoff Dr. Mr. Horse in his own soap opera series....supported by his faithful love interest, Nurse Sheep who worships the stable he trods in. Tears and laughs abound.Girls would eat this shit up, I tell ya.

December 29, 2011 04:20 PM

December 27, 2011 08:16 AM

Let's take a closer look at the Wally Wood architecture that I posted a few days ago. There was a lot going on there and one post wasn't enough to cover it.


Wood intuitively knows that tight spaces and varying levels (above) are sheltering and nurturing. We naturally seek safety in places like that.  A house full of gullies and alcoves and ledges and interesting reveals fits the kind of creature we are.

Of course a home consisting of nothing but tight spaces would be claustrophobic. I like the way Wood opens up the space in front of the entrance. Immediately upon entering the house (or is it an apartment?) you're confronted with a choice: whether to walk down into the living room or up onto the second floor. From the vantage point of the door both choices are visible and enticing.

I know what you're thinking...that some modern architecture (sample above) already does all that...but does it?  The examples I've seen are usually botched, like the bed above. Granted, it sits on a level or a ledge of sorts but it's lost in a gigantic, impersonal space. None of Wood's sheltering here.


For contrast, observe how Wood handles his levels (above). The levels resemble solid blocks. They seem to protect the girl sleeping in the single bed at the bottom of the stairs. I'm guessing that's a guest bed, which is also useful for reading and lounging in the middle of the day. Spacious closets could be hidden in the blocks. There's actually a lot of potential closet space here.

The sleeping hipster on the top level sacks out on the comfortable wall-to-wall carpet that covers the floors, stairs and walls. Currently wall carpets are dust traps, and are probably unhealthy, but the day can't be far off when the right material will make them practical.


Most modern architects are too fond of empty space (above). Wood seldom made that mistake.

Here's a large space that almost works. It would work a lot better with a low, nurturing, Wally Wood ceiling that would emphasize the wideness of the room.

Sigh! There's more to say on this subject, but it'll have to wait til after Christmas. I've got presents to wrap!

Let me lay on you........

December 25, 2011 09:40 PM

The Fire of Christ burst into Keegan McFly's breast last night and impelled him to create this glorious message of peace to share with cartoonists and lesser folk everywhere.Merry Christmas!(thanks to Keegan, Christ, Zeus, Zoroaster, Jehova, Buddha, Clampett, Allah and the rest of the pantheon of immortals)

December 25, 2011 02:09 PM

December 24, 2011 05:31 PM

Obviously, Popeye cartoons use many ingredients to make them so special. Throbbing is one of them.Personality is another, but those are secondary qualities of cartoons. Well, actually maybe throbbing is pretty important since it is hard to imagine live action being able to throb to the beat.But the one creative quality that is unique to animated cartoons is demonstrated artfully in this here

December 18, 2011 07:40 PM

IT'S MAINLY BECAUSE OF THE MEAT

December 18, 2011 07:11 PM

Sorry for the hasty Photoshopping! I'm swamped with things to do that relate to Christmas and my family! I'll stay on schedule though, even if I have to be a bit sloppy to do it.

December 17, 2011 08:42 PM

December 15, 2011 09:07 AM

Wow! Christmas shopping is a bear, isn't it?  Every year I resolve to shop early and every year I end up doing my shopping at the last minute.


Part of the reason is my family. It takes me forever to figure out what to give them. I have a family of philosophers who are all deeply committed to the holiday, but who all have disdain for materialism and presents. All except me, that is...I love presents. Give me a video game or a book and I'm happy as a bug. That's because I know the true meaning of Christmas. It's a holiday that unites profound spiritual values with an over-the-top mania for toys and parties. That's it! It's so simple...just a good old-fashioned contradiction. All the great ideas embody contradictions.



By the way: The second picture from the top is available on the net as a black and white poster. If you have your own business, or are thinking of starting one, you should consider putting this on your office wall. It depicts the retailers dream: customers who fight to get what you're selling because you did such a good job of presenting it.

http://www.art.com/products/p13875401-sa-i2773344/yale-joel-bargain-hunters-shopping-at-ohrbachs-store.htm?sorig=cat&sorigid=0&dimvals=5007941&ui=36f6e5288f41425988679cae3b4980c5

Someone on the net (I can't remember who) is offering a slightly more expensive version that might be larger and printed on photographic paper.




I have a suggestion for a $16 gift from Amazon: how about this terrific 3 1/2 hr. DVD documentary on the Medici? I just watched the whole thing in one sitting and I was bowled over by it. The Medici are my new heroes.

The Medici weren't just another ambitious family. They had a collective vision which led them for 200 years to chip away at the Middle Ages and initiate the modern world. The last great Medici contribution was scientific...they gave the world Galileo and the scientific revolution.

They have a bad reputation today because a Medici Pope brought about the excesses that led to Martin Luther and the Reformation. That's unfortunate, but it seems like a misdemeanor when compared to the good that family did. They were amazingly moral when you consider that they didn't have to be. They were so appalled by the advocacy of deliberate deception in Machiavelli's gift copy of "The Prince" that they had the author beaten and thrown into the street.

After seeing this you'll wonder if the Medici were benign time travelers from the future.

December 13, 2011 06:50 AM

How about a serious post for a change?

If I were an economist the area I'd focus on would be the quest for a market driven method of providing full employment, which I define as voluntary employment at a living wage for everybody who is willing and able to work. That doesn't sound like it would be too difficult to achieve but, believe it or not, no modern economic system, including our own, has ever pulled it off. Even communist countries which call themselves "workers' states" haven't been able to do it. There's plenty of unemployment in those countries, they just don't report it.



Oddly enough, the only country which is widely believed to have achieved it was Germany in the 1930s. But is that true? And if it is true, how did they manage to do it? How did they get out of the Depression so quickly and then create full employment besides? I know nothing about economics, but I just read a book on the subject, and I'll pass along the opinions of the author.



The book is "The Nazi Economic Recovery 1932-1938" by R. J. Overy (1982). Overy believes the recovery was a fake. Unemployed people were simply drafted into The Labor Service, where they were forced to work for an extremely low wage, usually on farms. Once they were in the service they weren't classified as unemployed anymore. According to Overy the real German economic miracle occurred in the 50s, and had nothing to do with Nazi policy.



The Nazis were said by some to be Keynesians because they also believed in big government spending to handle unemployment. The author, who's a Keynesian himself, was revolted by the idea. He says Keynes strongly believed that big government spending had to be accompanied by low taxes. The Nazis believed in high taxes. They didn't want consumers to spend money on things, they wanted them to save their money in banks where the Nazi's could make use of it.



Apparently the Nazis inherited what today we might call a "progressive" agenda from the Wiemar Republic. In Wiemar the government owned or controlled some big industries and when the Nazis took over they simply amplified that policy, gradually expanding it til even small business came under their control.

Add that to fact that Germany didn't try to export or import much during this period and was concerned mainly with self sufficiency wherever possible. Overy says this was disastrous for the country because it cut them off from foreign competition which, if they had engaged in it, would have forced the country to increase efficiency and to modernize. No wonder wartime Germany used slave labor. They were too inefficient to produce enough goods by normal methods.



Overy's book left me feeling sad for the Germans. They had a cruel leadership to be sure, but they were also an energetic, educated people handicapped by a system that just didn't work.

December 11, 2011 08:56 AM

'Gotta do some Christmas shopping! I'll be back on Tuesday, the 13th!



Bye the way, a friend called up to say he discovered a video I put up a couple of years ago on the subject of "Jane Eyre." Holy Cow! I forgot all about that! I just listened to it, and found it entertaining...not because of me, but because of the reference material that I played. Give it a listen and see what you think.

December 10, 2011 09:40 AM

You can see how it work by going here.PoseBook website

December 09, 2011 10:56 PM

PoseBook website

December 09, 2011 10:55 PM

Here's Oswald and his gang doing stuff that works only in cartoons.Here's another common ingredient from all early cartoons, not necessarily essential though:From a Lantz cartoon called "Carnival Capers" I think. Around 1932?

December 09, 2011 06:12 PM

The fact that humans have long, unruly strings growing out of the top of their heads is funny. Cartoonists ignore that at their own peril.































Even live action comedic actors (above) would benefit from wig-like hair. If you're Betty Boop or Cary Grant then the well-groomed wigless look is great, but really, how many people does that apply to?  For most comedians real hair needs to have a life of its own. It should be willful and should require constant adjustment.


There's more to say about cartoon hair, so I'll return to the subject again. Right now I want to announce that Steve Worth has a new animation site called "Animation Resources." Steve was the former webmaster of the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, one of my favorite animation sites. The last time I looked the site was still up but it appeared to be inactive, and now Steve has taken up residence at this new address. There's lots and lots of valuable material there, with new articles being added all the time. Check it out!

http://animationresources.org/

December 08, 2011 06:29 AM

The essential ingredient of cartoon animation is not on this list.I had a great clip reel that Kedz made for me but I no longer can post clips on my blog for some mysterious reason. It used to be easy, but Internet Jesus has changed everything without telling me so the same steps I used to use no longer satisfy Him.You'll have to use your imagination and pretend all these pictures are moving.

December 06, 2011 07:18 PM

Toby & Skip: Smells like trouble from Harmke Pasterkamp on Vimeo.Here's my pal Harmke's cartoon she made in cute school. She did it all in ToonBoom Animate (which works the same way as Harmony, only is a lot cheaper)and you can find some of her PRODUCTION ART here:and of course there has to bethe TOBY AND SKIP OFFICIAL FACEBOOK PAGEHarmke has also done excellent inking for me.We would work

December 03, 2011 05:16 PM

EXT. 50S BEAT COFFEE SHOP: We hear a discussion going on inside.

EDDIE BEATNIK (VO): "So that's where the art of film is today...."




 BEATNIK #7: "Yeah! Fellini thinks we're all interested in his fantasies about fat girls."

December 03, 2011 07:33 AM

some cute reliefa film by my pal, Harmke coming up...

November 30, 2011 06:30 PM

November 29, 2011 07:27 AM

I'll end with this interesting study (above) of a woman with a big chest compensating for the frontal weight in two different ways, one of them very cartoony. I notice the pose on the right includes a forward thrusting head. Fascinating!

November 28, 2011 03:27 PM

Half the fun of any parade is watching people (above) in the crowd. I notice the kids in this picture are wearing the kind of clothes worn by the kids in the "Christmas Story" movie. My parents used to dress me like that. Only the cheeks were unprotected, and they froze like crazy!


Unbelievable! Look at that crowd (above)! What if someone in there had to pee? How would he have done it?


A wild turkey takes flight (above). Look at those crazed eyes!


This (above) is indisputably the best Superman balloon ever to grace the parade!


People in those days (above) certainly had a taste for cartoon weirdness! Balloons today are too perfect, too middle of the road, too on-model.


I like how every parade ended with Santa, who was surrounded by dozens of beautiful women. Boy, Santa was the Hugh Hefner of his day!


When I was a kid nobody did any Christmas shopping til after Thanksgiving. Nobody tried to beat the crowds by shopping early, they just waited til the last minute then everybody shopped at the same time, shoulder to shoulder...what an ordeal!

Christmas shopping for us kids was easy. Mothers got quart bottles of cheap perfume or fuzzy slippers. Dads got ties. We kids really believed that they treasured those presents, and we devoted a lot of time to making sure that they used them.

My favorite thing to do was to visit the toy departments (above) in the big department stores. Sometimes they'd devote half of a whole floor to toys, and they were the kind of toys you couldn't get in your local neighborhood shops: chemistry sets, air rifles, Erector Sets, marionettes, space ships and space helmets, toy soldiers...what a feast! There was always a giant diorama showing all the top of the line toy trains weaving in and out of mountain tunnels and trestles. It was heaven for kids but hell for adults, who had to pry their crying kids unwilling fingers from toy shelves when it was time to go home.

Oh, well...enough nostalgia! Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!!!!!

November 28, 2011 03:24 PM

I thought I'd talk about how much fun it was to be sick for a week. I mean that literally...on some level it actually was fun.

When I realized the sickness was serious, when I shivered through two or three freezing, sweaty, virtually sleepless nights, I did what I always do in situations like that and went into my Ralph Phillips/Calvin and Hobbes routine where I psyched my self into believing that I was at death's door.  Boy, did I have fantasies!



What fantasies? Well there was the one where I gave a brave speech to the U.N. from my deathbed which had been halled onto the stage of the General Assembly pavilion . The audience cried as I took them through anecdotes of the ups and downs of my tumultuous life. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Everyone saw himself, indeed the whole pathos and greatness of the human condition reflected in my stories. I bowed my head humbly to accept a standing ovation.


And my family? That was another fantasy. Tearfully they gathered round my bedside while grief stricken plantation workers sang spirituals under the Magnolias outside my window.  My children bade me goodbye and fessed up to lending my Halloween masks to their stupid friends when I wasn't looking. They assured me that they'd memorized every word of my priceless lectures, and would pass the precious-as-rubies words to their own children when they came along.



Last of all was my wife. With tears flowing down her cheeks she forgave me for not being a rich doctor or a lawyer, and admitted that I was probably the better cook. She confessed that all my tirades against Bill Gates and Japanese engineers were justified, and that she had secretly kept scrupulous notes so that what I said could be shared with the world in a posthumous book.



No, I didn't fantasize about being levitated up into heaven in flowing white robes, that's silly, but I did imagine friends and visitors to this site swamping my family with telegrams claiming that I had transformed the animation industry. A collection was gotten up to install a bench of meditation and remembrance of me in the middle of the highway, at the juncture of the 101 and the 405, where I had spent so many unwilling hours in life.



I could go on, but you get the idea. When the flu finally abated, I was slowly brought back to the real world. After grappling for long hours on my back with the great philosophical issues, after listening to the creaks in the lonely house made by the wind and the rattling pipes, after watching endless TV documentaries in which Australians reached into Python holes, I made my way into the blinding sunlight of the workaday world.
I felt like I had been away in a foreign country, and I had.

November 28, 2011 03:18 PM

It's too bad Eddie isn't here to provide his brilliant play by play caricature commentary.While I'm drawing, he stands behind me and stares at the poor victim in front of me and describes how funny looking they are in vivid picturesque terms.Eddie is a genius verbaturist. His literary descriptions are a million times more pictorial than the cartoons that result from script writer stories.Maybe

November 25, 2011 09:58 AM

November 24, 2011 07:18 AM

November 23, 2011 06:03 AM

I Created this for a licensed deal, so in time they will be making this russian doll set. It was a lot of fun to do. I work on many properties for other people that don't always go anywhere and get shelved, so it is nice to create properties that get made and have ownership in. This is the beauty of licensing, I encourage every artist to look into it.

November 22, 2011 05:14 PM

There were a lot of mustaches running around Bristol last week, so I asked this one why. It turns out that in Britain, many people celebrate national prostate cancer month by growing a bush under their nose. True!Emma is not celebrating national prostate destruction.Simon's prostate doesn't seem to be causing him any problems.These 2 lovebirds waited forever in line to get a drawing but were

November 21, 2011 08:43 PM

November 21, 2011 08:13 AM

If you're a guy, and you want to make your mother happy, there's no easier way to do it than to send her a picture of yourself in a suit. All parents, no matter how laid back, no matter how criminally inclined or grody they are, yearn to see a picture of their son in a well-tailored suit. Photo editing software makes that easy to do, so why deny that simple pleasure to them? Why not send them a distinguished picture of yourself this very day? Here's a little help from the staff of Theory Corner...

First, you'll need a good picture to graft your head onto. I recommend the one above, which I believe is the young Humphrey Bogart. It's black and white, which avoids color matching problems, and the pose is simple and direct.

November 21, 2011 06:46 AM

November 20, 2011 11:42 PM

That's Bonnie who is a tour director at the zoo and she gave me a swell tour -and a Pink Panther Bendy toy. More zoo pics coming...

November 20, 2011 09:55 AM

November 19, 2011 09:15 AM

I love the place. It's so bright and inviting, and full of ideas. An awful lot of them are bad ideas, but you forgive that because every once in a while you stumble on something that's a brilliant rethinking of something you thought couldn't be improved.



But like I said, it's not all good. Some of the kids rooms (above) bordered on child abuse. How do you like those High Kitsch flat-colored cabinets or the deliberately generic design of the ladybug? Why is the yellow stool so dorky?



On the other hand, you gotta love these bunk beds. Kids like stuff like that!


What do you think of this work space (above)? It's so tiny! Surely big ideas require big writing surfaces. Ikea does make beautiful, sturdy wooden desks but they're called dinner tables. I have lots of ideas for desk designs. Maybe I'll do a blog about them sometime.


Boy, Ikea sure is good at cheery! It's hard not to smile when you see a room like this, even if you'd go nuts if you had to live in it. This is the kind of place Stimpy would design for Ren, the kind of place that would provoke a curmudgeon into homicidal rage.



I think here in America we're shielded from the weirdest stuff (above). It would be great to go to Sweden and see what's for sale in the Ikeas there.




I think the native Swedish Ikea is chock full of promotions for their prefab houses and office buildings, and for plans for office interiors. Come to think of it, I think Ikea designs whole communities. Fascinating! Disney might have gone this route if he'd lived longer.

BTW: I haven't forgotten the Beatnik stuff. I'm working on it now, and it's a ton of fun. I was just too spaced out to do it earlier in the week!

November 19, 2011 08:12 AM

November 19, 2011 01:36 AM

November 18, 2011 05:35 PM

These lovely ladies are volunteers at the Bristol festival. They are all animators and stop motion enthusiasts.This is Abby who was helping me color today. Unlike me, she can stay inside the lines, so I fired myself.That's Rebecca who is helping me find lumpy jeans with holes in them and patiently listening to me complain about the modern world.This is Claire and I will get her to pose with her

November 16, 2011 07:32 PM

November 15, 2011 10:56 PM

Here's another Bristol article. It looks the same as Design Week and has some overlap but also has some other questions.John Kricfalusi: Animator

November 15, 2011 10:11 PM

I don't know why anyone would make pizza from scratch at home when great pies can be had cheap almost anywhere in America. Hmmm...well, wait a minute, maybe I can imagine why. You go to all that trouble because you have an idea for an improvement that could beat what the pros do.

Okay, here's my idea and I'm dying to test it. It's something you add to the sauce.




That ingredient is...(drum roll)..stock! That's right, stock, just like you find in French cooking. I'm no expert, but I know from the internet that it's possible to make both cheese and mushroom stock (stock = a condensed essence of a food's flavor that's much more intense than the real thing). Has anyone ever tried using stock in pizza? We'll never know because professionals don't share their secrets. Anyway, I'm dying to try it.

I'm also dying to try aromatic stock.  That's a stock whose purpose is to make the food smell good.

Making aromatic stock might be more complicated than it sounds. My only knowledge of aromas comes from a movie called "Perfume." According to the film a great aroma is a combination of three scents: the first is a the "grabber" smell. It's immediately intriguing and delightful, but doesn't last very long. The second aroma is the long lasting body of the smell, the one that everyone associates with your product. The last smell is the aroma's soul...the unexpected scent that gives a unique character to the product.

The film explains that the initial smell requires a tiny amount of alcohol for fast delivery to the nose, but that quickly evaporates. The second smell requires fat because the smell of fat stays on the nose for a long time. The third smell...well that's the tough one. I wonder what unexpected smell could give an ordinary slice of cheese pizza...a soul.

November 15, 2011 03:07 PM

Sorry, I wasn't able to finish the blog post on time. I'm still just too sick. Just for the heck of it, I thought I'd show you a few outtakes of the beatnik story I was working on when the flu descended, and I had to stop. No story here, just random stuff.

Er...this didn't turn out the way I intended. Actually, I was going for a "dismissive "tut, tut" and didn't realize how it would look to the camera.

How do you like the beats in the background? They're so delightfully decadent!


It occurred to me that Beats were always angry, so I tried an angry pose. Geez, is my head really that big?


Beatniks smoked a lot, so I thought I'd throw that in.

While I was fooling around with beatnik pictures like these I chanced on a one act play about the subject that turned out to be brilliant, so I decided to illustrate that story instead of my own. The problem is that I had to change it a bit in order to squeeze it into a single post. I'll give the author full credit, but I doubt that will deter him from coming after me with a meat cleaver!

Aaaaargh! Now I'm going to drag myself back into my sick bed!

November 15, 2011 02:34 PM

November 15, 2011 06:27 AM

Design Week Interview

November 14, 2011 09:09 PM

I am SICK AS A DOG! I got a flu shot a month ago, but it looks like I caught something the shot didn't cover.  I can't read very long, and I'm tired unto death of watching bad daytime TV. Well, at least I'm losing weight.

If I can I'll be back on Tuesday morning.

November 14, 2011 04:30 AM

There's magnificent Magnus who (along with John Kedzie) helped organize all my film clips and crap.On my way to Bristol tomorrow...

November 13, 2011 09:59 PM

November 13, 2011 02:13 PM

I have plenty of photos that I somehow neglected to put up in the weeks preceding Halloween. I could file them away for next year, but what if I got hit by a car...you'd most likely never see some of this stuff. No, I'll put them up now, even though the holiday's over.

My favorite picture of the lot is this one (above), of a mildew ridden old shop that sells used masks as well as new ones. What a rational idea! Gee, seeing this reminds me of beloved old used book stores that were everywhere only a short time ago. Store like that were usually run by retired eccentrics who had difficulty counting the change, but who somehow managed to get books that no one else did.



Above, Dali's famous skull made of girls.

November 13, 2011 07:51 AM

November 12, 2011 08:30 PM

This is one of the pics we'll be raffling off after today's 4:00 screening.Here's yesterday's winner, Christian.

November 12, 2011 11:16 AM

November 10, 2011 11:09 PM

If newspapers are going to build circulation again, they'll need to show more photos, and few things are more interesting to look at than photos of criminals (above).

Dramatic crime photos like the one above are better suited for magazines than newspapers. Newspaper readers prefer something more sedate. They like to see unposed criminal faces that they can study at leisure. Maybe that's because most people want to confirm their belief that they're good at judging people by their appearance.


I like crime portraits that beg to tell a story. Take the one above, for example. The woman looks intelligent. In another life she might have been the District Attorney rather than a prisoner in the dock. How did she end up in jail? Did a man lead her astray? Was she born bad? Is she actually evil? You want to know more about her, and that sells newspapers.


Some criminals (above) look bad through and through. You need pictures of those people, too. Maybe seeing them caught and held up for public display satisfies the part of us that yearns to grab a torch and a pitchfork and storm Frankenstein's castle.


Most newspaper photos are served up in bad resolution, but that's an asset, not a liability. Marshal McLuhan said that old black and white TV was more emotionally involving than modern color TV. The mental effort we were forced to exert in order to construct images from the old TV scan lines compelled us to get involved with what we were seeing. Well, dot printing has the same effect.

Hazy newspaper reproduction forces us to become involved with the pictures. Newspapers are actually a perfect medium for a certain type of picture. By "certain type" I mean that  the subject matter has to be at least potentially interesting, something which current newspaper photos never are.

November 10, 2011 07:50 AM

November 09, 2011 04:10 PM

That fuzzy picture is of Trond, me and Anna in front of the concrete slab of fame.There's Anna and Magnus Robot Fighter.Trond and Anna.Bathroom with no tub.Money with holes shot in it.Familiar money.

November 08, 2011 08:20 PM

Fascinating! On a whim, I googled a few variations of "girls posing like hood ornaments" and discovered these two pictures, above and below.


This is the kind of pose you want on a statue resting on a pillar near your easy chair.


A sidebar on the adult site containing the hood ornament pictures led to this amazing picture (above)! The woman on the left is obviously having second thoughts, and who can blame her? The photographer set her up with some Li'l Abner-type wild woman. The mind boggles to think of what this session must have been like!

 I can only guess that a shortage of edible squirrels and mice brought her out of the hills, down to the outer edge of civilization. Maybe she lived out of dumpsters for a while, then came to the attention of the law when she was caught pilfering Rogaine. 'Just a guess.


Emboldened by my success with the opening pictures, I got a sandwich and a beer and hit the adult sites in earnest. I discovered a whole site devoted to overweight women in tight skirts. Man, this picture (above) makes me want to draw!


A visit to a nerd site resulted in this photo (above). I'm guessing that the photographer provided the glasses, which are larger than people wear now, but which add character to the face.


Believe it or not, this girl (above) was on the same nerd site. Does she seem like a nerd to you? I must define the word differently than other people do.


On a different subject, I thought I'd mention the things I bought on the day after Halloween, when everything was 50% off. Well, I got a great vampire castle but it's a kit  and it'll be a while before I can build it. I also got a terrific beret, but that's for a future story about beatniks.

The only thing I can show here is a pair of wax lips, the best I've ever seen. Don't underestimate wax lips; there are dozens of things you can do with them. Here (above) they allow me to be Edward G. Robinson,

November 06, 2011 10:07 AM

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2011/10/fredrikstad-animation-festival-norway.htmlHope to see some of you there!

November 06, 2011 06:49 AM

I don't smoke but the subject interests me, maybe because it strikes me as odd that cigarette smokers don't seem to enjoy it very much. Cigar and pipe smokers enjoy it. Look at them: they have magazines, clubs, internet sites...all sorts of fan outlets. What do cigarette smokers have? Nothing. No clubs, no magazines...zip. They seem to smoke just to satisfy an urge. Why is that? Why the difference?



I think it's because current cigarette smokers don't know how to smoke. They only know how to create mist, and there's no fun in that. Real smoking is almost a lost art.

Pushing a shapeless mist out of the mouth like the two women above is not smoking. It's...I don't know what to call it..."evacuating." Smoking implies that you enjoy watching and manipulating the slowly unraveling thing called smoke.



And why wouldn't you enjoy it?  Unlike mist, smoke tells stories. The smoke above, for example: I see four little ghosts happily nibbling on a spinal column til two of them disappear, sending their friends into a panic. Moments later this scene might be replaced by cats attacking a school bus or Indians eating pies. Smoke puts on a show for you, while mist is just...well...mist.



I blame the ascendancy of mist on Flappers from the 1920s who, to judge from photos, didn't have a clue about the art of smoking, but I could be wrong. Maybe the decline of true smoking coincides with inhaling, which I'm guessing began in the 30s or 40s. Inhaled smoke turns into vapor. When you blow it out, it's just formless mist. It has no strings, no crawl, no shape, no imaginary animals or ghosts...it's just a haze. That's a pity because tobacco smoke is capable of so much more. It was just never meant to be inhaled.



Cigarette smokers who inhale like to think that they're superior to noninhaling smokers, but actually the opposite is true. Inhalers have limited imaginations and only smoke to be sedated. People who don't inhale are the real sophisticates. They're intellectually engaged in what they're creating. They enjoy the mysterious drama that unfolds infront of them.



Sometimes I wonder if the whole antismoking movement would have had the same zeal if smoking had prevailed over mist making. My guess is that smoke particles are larger and heavier than mist particles. They tend to cling to the area around the smoker, and fall to the ground at his feet. Mist on the other hand, fills the room and becomes part of the atmosphere that everybody has to breathe, whether they like it or not. Maybe the antismoking people are really just antimist.



Don't get me wrong...I don't advocate smoking. It's just too dangerous, even when it's done right. But if you're determined to do it anyway...well, geez, at least make an effort to enjoy it.

November 02, 2011 08:18 AM

Here's what Shawn Dickinson is wearing tonight, so when he says "Trick or Treat" make him draw you a cartoon for his sugar.It's ok to offer him a cigarette because his costume isHere's demonic voice actor Auralynn swathed in the sweet blood of her latest victim.Here's some really scary costumes thanks to Mike Fontanelli.Here's a mask actually of him.Nothing is scarier than a duck wearing a

November 01, 2011 12:46 AM

One of the subjects I'm going to talk about is taking advantage of what animation can do that you can't do as well in other media.You can do abstracted designs...You can do extreme exaggeration. This type of gag would just look grotesque in live action.Like this:Although both Jerry Lewis and the 3 Stooges did some similar things, but not anywhere near as exaggerated.People are much more eager to

October 31, 2011 02:41 AM

Aaargh! These are horrible, horrible pictures, but I don't have time to redo them.  Boy, this has been one busy week! I still haven't put up any decorations, but my daughter volunteered to help me tomorrow if I get stuck. I can't believe we're doing this so late!


 As you can see, my costume is the Muskrat lodge uniform, and if you're an especially good observer you'll note that I'm wearing the Grand Master hat. That's new...I just got it!  The epaulets are made of paper. I couldn't find the old braided ones. I kinda like the way paper looks.


In real life the hat looks great, but in photos it makes me look like a Bolshevik.


Aaaaaarghhh!!!!! This picture (above) genuinely scares me! It's me, but it's a different me.  It's a glimpse into a parallel universe where I own a small motel in Ohio, and play poker with the boys once a week.

That's it for the costume but hey, if you live in LA, stop by Boney Island in North Hollywood this Saturday or Sunday night. Milt Grey says a couple of Simpsons artists put together a huge, free Halloween display that rivals anything you can find at Knott's Berry Farm or Disneyland. Maybe I'll see you there! Here's a site with all the info:

http://boneyisland.com/main.html

October 31, 2011 01:14 AM

Hey Dad, remember when you looked like a movie star?I love how these 50s Kodachrome photos look. I always wanted to make a cartoon using this type of color and lighting.Here's Dad in the air force. He'll tell you that every kid needs to spend at least 2 years in the service "That way, you'll learn some Goddamn DISCIPLINE!"Here's that hot chick he snagged with his rugged looks and manly jaw.My Mom

October 29, 2011 05:27 PM

A RIGHTEOUS MASK (above)!!!!!! But who sells these? Was this custom-made?


I see this Wolverton girl (above) as a sculpture made from a base consisting of a carved- out empty milk container (gallon size) and a ropey mop.


This Don Martin guy would look great 6' tall on the outside of a door. So would Clampett's indian, the one with a skinny neck and a big belly, but I can't find a good picture on the net.


Plastic or rubber skulls (above) always look good with a wig of flowing girls hair.


Redraw this (above) Tex Avery take picture very large and color it for your front porch. The kids'll love it!


Glue any old thing from your wastebasket onto a paper bag to make a mask. Add color.


Liberians considered this (above) to be a JUDGE'S mask!!!!????? Man, I'd like to see a Liberian trial!


Above, an interesting color scheme by Picasso. If you have something for the porch that needs to be painted.....

October 28, 2011 06:27 AM

October 27, 2011 08:13 PM

John K./Spumco Cartoon Screening and Signing Thursday Nov 17 2 PMCome and hang out, shake hands and watch some of my cartoons. I think I will show a nice clean uncut "Boo Boo Runs Wild" that Cartoon Network has graciously given me...and some other rare things..During the signing, you can bring me t shirts or whatever to sign, or you can have me draw you a caricature for a measly 12 LBs! 12 lbs of

October 27, 2011 03:41 AM

I did four posts about Steve Worth in the past three weeks, and just when I thought it was time to give some other topic a chance, Steve's internet TV show (above) debuted! Haw! Well, we'll just have to make room for a fifth post, because the event is historic. This is the first original YouTube cartoon show... ever!

Boy, Steve really got into the part (above) he's playing: that of a sorcerer who's trying to raise Walt Disney from the dead. Between attempts we get to watch three well chosen  cartoons, including one of my all-time favorites: "Swing You Sinners." Steve was a line producer for some pretty good people (Spumko, Bakshi, etc.) and is a long time cartoon fan, so he knows what the good stuff is.


All this is done in cahoots with Fred Seibert and his company, "Refrederator." Fred as you know, was the executive producer behind Cartoon Network shows like 'What a Cartoon," "Dexter's Lab" and "The Powerpuff Girls." Fred got together with YouTube to see if an internet cartoon show could be made to work, and this pilot is the result. If enough fans like it, expect to see a new show at regular intervals.

Let's see...did I leave anything out? Oh yes...the way it works is that you have to click inside the black box at the end of the video. The box appears only for an instant, so be ready. When you do that you'll be taken to the next video. The whole show requires several videos to play out, but they're all connected, like beads on a string.

Leave a comment on YouTube and let Steve know what you think!

October 26, 2011 03:58 AM

I'll get to the decorations in a minute. First, check out this (above) painting. It's huge, isn't it!? I shrunk my sidebar to make room for it, and it still won't fit! Click to enlarge to see the whole thing. Haw! I pity people who are viewing this on a cel phone!

BTW: Is this Dan Krall's work?


Awwww...that's (above) one cute kid, no doubt about it!

I stocked up on Halloween candy early this year, and I did what I always did and began nibbling as soon as I got it home. I hope there'll be some left for the kids. I could ask my family to hide it from me, but that probably wouldn't help. I know all their hiding places.


I'd be getting a late start, but I'm tempted to put big versions of masks like these on my front porch for Halloween. Aaaargh! I wonder if I have enough cardboard?


Is that (above) a mask? I mean a mask you can buy? If so, it's pretty well done. Of course I collect funny masks, not serious ones.


Old kids book illustrators pulled no punches, as you can see above. Hideous deaths were the standard consequence of crimes like not doing chores. Framed color xeroxes of pictures like this look good around doors...something for Trick or Treaters to look at.


It would be easy to make this (above)with boxes and an old, falling-apart mask. I'd put it under the bench by the front door.


An interesting robot design, and it looks easy to reproduce, too. Well, easy if you have enough X%&$@ cardboard! You really need to start collecting boxes for weeks before the holiday. Come to think of it, the design of the guy is pretty good, too. Who drew this?

October 25, 2011 11:35 PM

The man is a genius.

October 23, 2011 10:19 PM

I wish the girls would read something a little meatier than the books shown on the posters.



When I said "meatier" I was thinking of something like Tennyson but, come to think of it, I'd really like to hear a poem like the one above read naked...wouldn't you? The poem starts 22 seconds into the video.



Nudity would add so much to a reading like the one Edie Adams gives to the lyrics of this song (above).

The problem here is that these girls are all burlesque dancers, and probably aren't very good readers. Even so, with the right director....

October 23, 2011 08:34 AM

At both upcoming animation festivals, they asked me to do a seminar and talk about and show some of my influences. Obviously I'm really influenced by classic cartoons and I love cartooniness and magic - the stuff that the cartoon medium does most naturally and better than other media.But maybe the one thing I do differently than most cartoons is the acting. I'm not that influenced by cartoon

October 22, 2011 05:57 AM

It may also be the ugliest. Where on Earth did that guy get a suit like that? And what's it made of? Rubber? Vinyl? It doesn't look very comfortable. It reminds me of the tar ball Moe was trapped in when he floated up to the top of a barn in one of The Three Stooges films.



Thanks to a much appreciated comment from Teki, I now know where these suits come from: a company called Squeak Latex. Check out squeaklatex.com and the YouTube video above.



Here's (above) the Squeak Latex "Blueberry Suit." Amazing!



Probably everybody here has seen this already, but in case you haven't...this is one of the new line of realistic masks put out by Rusty Slussen's SPFX company. The cost? $810, and worth every penny. A bank robber recently robbed five banks with an afroamerican variant of this! Thanks to Patrick Micheal for telling me about it!

There are much better views of the mask on other YouTube videos, but this one shows how quickly the mask comes off, and it's only 20 seconds long.


Man, every year plastic masks look more appealing to me. They're more imaginative than most rubber masks, and they're a heck of a lot cheaper. The problem is that the Golden Age of this sort of thing may already have passed.

I'll have to pay a visit to my local Goth supply store and see what's on the walls this year. I don't think "The Spirit" stores sell these. I wonder why?


Wow! A nifty disguise (above) that you can put into a brief case or a back pack!

A cool wooden mask (above)...from Japan, according to a commenter!


The best thing about kid costumes in a box was always the plastic mask. Nowadays you can buy masks like that without buying the costume. At last! Reason has prevailed!


So THAT'S how you make a spider costume (above)! Okay, I get it now!

October 21, 2011 11:28 PM

HUNGRY GUEST: "Er...okay! (Gulp!)"


Auralynn takes a bite. The room goes silent as she carefully chews and swallows. She pauses...almost speaks...then pauses again........then, after the deepest reflection...

AURALYNN: "Yes, Stephen has produced a fine meal."

RELIEVED GUEST: "Thank Heaven! LET'S EAT!"


That did it! Everybody lays into the food.

October 20, 2011 06:10 PM

I thought I'd do an occasional guest spot where friends who cook show us how they make their favorite dishes. I'll start with Steve Worth who makes an outstanding barbecued Shish Kebab, and declares that he'll reveal all his secrets here.



INT. STEVE'S CAR:

STEVE (VO): "Fresh ingredients are important, Eddie, and since we're doing Shish Kebab, what better place to go than the local Armenian market?"

October 19, 2011 07:35 AM

INT. STEVE'S KITCHEN:

STEVE: "I already put together the kebabs. Lots of good marinated chicken breasts on 'em. I'll show you in a minute. Right now we're going to make the side dishes: zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant and corn.  We slice them lengthwise then give them a nice rub with olive oil, garlic, pepper, and fresh red basil."

EDDIE: "Are you really going to use that much garlic?"

STEVE: "Yes, absolutely! Listen, you can never have too much garlic! That makes everything taste good! You'd eat your own foot if it was covered with that stuff!"


STEVE: "See, what you want to do with garlic and olive oil is marinate yourself from the inside. It's what W. C. Fields meant when he said that he never drinks water because it makes the insides rusty. Booze on the other hand, makes the insides nice and smooth, at least that's what Fields believed. That's the way I feel about garlic and oil."



EDDIE: "Don't the words 'grilling' and 'barbecue' mean the same thing?"

STEVE: "No way! Grilling means the meat is directly over a flame. Barbecuing means the meat is cooked by indirect, radiant heat. I'm about to stop grilling and begin barbecuing now. I'll turn off the middle burners and turn on the side ones. Then I'll put the cover down.

This is the stage where most of the cooking takes place. It'll take a while, and when it's almost done I'll pop up the hood and grill it a short time on the center burners again. That's to sear it again and make sure the juices don't leak out."


EDDIE: "Any other theories?"

STEVE:  "Nope. It's all pretty simple, really. You combine stinky stuff (aromatics like fresh basil, ginger, and garlic), dead stuff (meat), liquids (chicken broth, beer, wine, beef stock), grease (olive oil), and fire (from a barbecue). Do that and you can't go wrong!"

EDDIE: Okay, those are the final words from the man himself! In the interest of objectivity I'll do one more post where Auralynn, JoJo, Alex, Steve and I sample what Steve has wrought, and judge him. Don't miss it!"

October 19, 2011 07:26 AM

Here's my welcoming committee.Highlights:Don Hahn on the 80s-90s Disney RenaissanceDon was production manager and producer at Disney's in the late 80s and through the 90s and will talk about the behind the scenes stories that went on during the making of their animated films. Many cartoonists and animators who are friends of mine or who I have worked with help make these films and I'm sure Don

October 19, 2011 05:25 AM

INT. STEVE'S KITCHEN:

STEVE: "We're going to make the side dishes first: zuccini, cucumbers, and eggplant.  We slice them lengthwise then give them a nice rub with olive oil, garlic, pepper, and fresh basil."

EDDIE: "Are you really going to use that much garlic?"

STEVE: "Yes, absolutely! Listen, you can never have too much garlic or onions! They make everything taste good! You'd eat your own foot if it was covered with that stuff!"


STEVE: "See, what you want to do with garlic and olive oil is marinate yourself from the inside. It's what W. C. Fields meant when he said that he never drinks water because it makes the insides rusty. Booze on the other hand, makes the insides nice and smooth, at least that's what Fields believed. That's the way I feel about garlic and oil."

October 18, 2011 05:04 AM

AN UNFINISHED LOAFI can't seem to find a single drawing program that has all the fundamental tools you need to do good clean finished drawings in it.I have to use at least 2 programs to get a clean drawing done and then I have to spend a ton of time fixing up details. - There oughta be quick and easy clean up tools in the drawing programs.The way I'm doing it now is I import my rough drawing into

October 16, 2011 07:33 PM

October 16, 2011 04:24 PM

That's what physicists are telling us now...that the universe is flat. Twenty years ago  it was considered curved; saddle-shaped, in fact. Man, things are changing fast! It's an exciting time to be a cosmologist, but a confusing time for everybody else.

So where did this idea come from? The answer is contained in the 15 minute video above. Tor Barstad says we have a reliable way to measure the curvature of light from two celestial objects billions of light years away, and that these lines and angles show no bending, as they would if the universe was curved.



Here's (above) a simpler explanation. This six minute video takes a while to get started, so I recommend  beginning at the two minute mark.

It's hard to know where all this is going, and new discoveries could change the picture in unpredictable ways. A couple of weeks ago it was discovered that a neutrino might be able to travel faster than light. If that turns out to be true, that could have a big effect on cosmological calculations, even though the faster speed increment is very slight.

BTW, there's a couple of interesting comments under this YouTube video. One says that "flat" refers only to the relatively even distribution of energy in the universe, but Tor Barstad's video definitely talks about flat in terms of geometry.



This one minute video (above) isn't relevant, but I'll put it up anyway because it's so interesting. It turns out that there's one thing we know for sure that can travel faster than light, and that's space. After The Big Bang space itself expanded faster than the speed of light, and is still expanding that fast. Anything traveling within existing space is limited to the speed of light.

It's strange to think how space is now regarded as a thing with definite properties, and with measurable energy.

October 14, 2011 05:26 AM

Slab 'n' Ernie are real little buggers.They crave trouble and terrorize the other kids in the neighborhood and are a bad influence on all small things.Their uncle George Liquor loves the little buggers and thinks they are the greatest kids in the world. Wet clay that he can mold into God-fearing decent Americans.He steeps them in superstition because he believes that only a big dose of fear of

October 14, 2011 12:18 AM

Gilray (above) wasn't just the funniest cartoonist of the early Nineteenth Century, he was one of the funniest cartoonists ever. I'm glad to see that nowadays he's getting the critical recognition he deserves.


He's most famous for the etchings he did during the Napoleonic Era (above). They're terrific, but my personal favorites are the caricatures of fashion (at the top) that he did in his later style.


Apparently some people (above) in Gilray's time payed so much attention to their wigs that they neglected certain other things.



Here (above) Gilray celebrates the opening to the public of an art exhibit at one of the downtown museums. Apparently public exhibitions like this were a novelty in Gilray's time.

Interesting, huh?


Hey, why did my sidebar shrink?

October 12, 2011 04:25 PM

CHARACTER MODELSSo I did some character models to give them an idea of how I would draw the characters as caricatures of the Simpsons and then explained that even drawing them that way wouldn’t be enough to achieve what I wanted to do.I’m even bored with the pose to pose style animation we did at Spumco where the only control we had over the look of the cartoon characters’ acting was in the held

October 12, 2011 04:19 PM

Here, for my money, is the best commercial currently on TV: the operatic bus ad for J. G. Wentworth. I find myself singing it on the street, and I musn't be the only one because YouTube is full of parodies of it. I wish I knew the story behind the making of it. Evidently a lot of trial and error was involved, and I document some of that here.

This is a one minute film that does everything right. Take the music: it's always catchy and to the point, and it's full of opportunities for good soloists to shine. Here a sympathetic director cast a great tenor and a great baritone, and rightly attempted to give them the star treatment.

Incidentally, note that the singers address the viewer most of the time, and not the girl who had the problem. That sounds illogical but, as you can see, it was the right thing to do. And I love the way the baritone in the back nudges his way up to the foreground. That's classic stagecraft. You can tell the director had stage experience, or at least hired a consultant who did.



Here's (above) an earlier version of the same commercial, probably by a different director. What a contrast! It opens on a boring, horizontal long shot where we can't see the performers' faces. When they do go in for a closeup it's on the female lead, who lacks star quality. The male lead is a little better but there's no attempt to make him a star. A great song is getting a frighteningly generic treatment here.

Compare that to the dynamic one-point perspective on the bus (the top video). where we could see the main actor clearly, and where the two primary singers were handled like stars. I love the way the bus version puts a lot of emphasis on the chorus. I LOVE choruses, and Baroque music, which this is, is full of them.



I wish I knew where this film (above) fit in the chronology. Is this earlier or later than the others? It certainly makes a lot of mistakes. The change of venue from shower to basement, to auto accident, to garage, to nursery is jarring.  The guy in the shower has some star quality, but he's not appealing in this role. The only appealing actor in the film is the white-haired mechanic, and he's not in it very long.

I have to admit that if I had directed this version I might have been tempted to change venues just like they did here. Man, that would have been an expensive mistake! We're lucky to have three versions of this film so we can learn without wasting money.



Here's (above) an early Wentworth commercial, which was done on the cheap. It's not a bad idea if you only have a few bucks to spend, but it doesn't work as good as it should because none of the actors has star quality. They're just generic people.

Regarding the first three videos: I love the way Wentworth kept at the problem til they got it right. They knew they had a first-rate song, and were willing to persevere through a lot of trial and error til they got what they wanted.

October 10, 2011 04:14 PM

This post is an answer to Brian who wrote to see if I had any ideas on the subject of early education. Brian has a young son, so his interest in the subject is more than academic. I answered briefly on the comments page, but I did a horrible job. I'll try again, and maybe I'll do better this time.

I should probably begin with a discussion of philosophy and goals, but I don't have much space, so I'll just cut to the chase and be as specific as I can. I'll talk about the way I raised my own son, and what worked and what didn't work. I'll emphasize kids media and try to hit other subjects like school and homework in future posts if there's an interest.



I think it helps if you know what virtues you're trying to teach. In my case I wanted my son to be smart, skilled, manly, kind, honest, articulate, hard working and idealistic (Today I'd add other qualities, but this was what was on my mind at the time). The hardest of all these qualities to transmit turned out to be skill. I only have skills that are relevant to the entertainment industry, and my kid wasn't interested in that. That meant general man skills, like learning how to fix a car, had to be learned outside the home, if at all.



Geez, how do you arrange for that? School wasn't set up to teach things like that, and I didn't personally know anyone who did man jobs for a living, not anybody who lived nearby, anyway. My biggest regret is that my kid didn't learn some of that stuff. If he had he might have grown up to be an engineer, which I think is a terrific thing to be. What he is now is also pretty good, so I have no complaints, but...building a bridge...now that's a real job (if you're not lucky enough to be a cartoonist, that is)!



My biggest fear for my kid was that he would grow up not fitting anywhere, not fitting into a specific niche that he has a clear and intense passion for. With the best of intentions school has turned out a generation of generalists...a big mistake, which is already leading to all sorts of problems.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that's me thinking like a parent. Parents like their kids to pick careers that have clear benchmarks, the kind of thing where you get the right schooling and the right certificates and you're all set. Another term for it is ticket punching. It's the kind of security that all parents want for their kids, and that all kids hate.



Anyway, what I did do right in my opinion, was to make lots of heroic books and films available, and to talk about them frequently, and with enthusiasm. I had lots of traditional boys books by Henty and Horatio Alger, Dumas, Rafael Sabitini, Karl May, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle,  and lots of sci fi, war strategy, history (kid firendly history like Defoe's "Journal of the Plague Years") and biography (kid friendly stuff like Ben Franklin's autobiography). We also had comics and comic reprints of Carl Barks, Stanley, Classics Illustrated, EC horror and sci-fi, DC, and Marvel.

Films we watched on tape in those days included Jason and the Argonauts, Sinbad, Davy Crockett, Zulu, Excalibur, And Then There Were None, The Four Feathers, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Murder in the Rue Morgue, Sergio Leone, Hitchcock, Star Trek, The Twilight Zone TV show, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc., etc. We also had lots of taped comedy: Sid Caesar, Kovacs, Gleason, Clampett, Avery, Jones, Disney, Betty Boop, etc.



The guiding star of my parenting philosophy was John Stuart Mill's dad. Mill senior used to take his son on long walks where he would talk about subjects most kids never even hear about. I would have loved it if my dad had done that for me, but I'm afraid my own talks were sometimes monologues rather than dialogues.

The toys around the house were mostly war toys...the most politically incorrect plastic war toys I could find...but also building blocks, cars and sports stuff. I'm not a militarist, but war toys like swords and flintlocks are a fun way to connect with history.



My kid liked all these things until he was about ten or so, when he started to be influenced by what other kids were reading and watching. We only had one of every media appliance, and they were all in the living room, where parents had some influence on what was watched. It was bliss from a parent's point of view, but it all ended when a friend gave my kid a radio of his own when he was ten. After that everything changed drastically, and my kid enthusiastically entered the modern world.



Things I thought my kid would like and he definitely didn't: a classic chemistry set, an Erector Set from the 1930s, and the film "Forbidden Planet," which he hated. He loved the Brothers Grimm when he was very young, but after 7 or 8 or so he lost interest. Me, I never lost my taste for those stories.

So that's the kind of media my kid was exposed to for the first ten years. He turned out okay, so it couldn't have hurt him much.

October 10, 2011 03:57 PM

Look what they made. Nice job! That'll sure attract the ghouls for some free candy.

October 10, 2011 05:32 AM

Does anyone live there that can tell me where to find some historic sights, buildings etc?

October 09, 2011 09:02 PM

AMID: 1.) First things first, what's the backstory here? How did you end up animating a Simpsons opening?Matt Groening and Al Jean asked me to do it. They showed me an opening that Banksy did that satirized the animation production assembly line system in Korea and told me it was really popular, so they wanted to do something similar with me.StoryboardAt first they just wanted me to do a

October 08, 2011 04:47 PM

Click the pic to see the flickassisted by:Jojo BaptistaTommy TannerGeneva HodgsonCG Moon, Stars, FX: Paul GriswoldCamera and tech help: Alex VassilevEnglish voice by Auralynn When, Japanese voice by Hitomi GriswoldThanks to Jason DeMarco and Mike Lazzo...and the helpful folks at Toonboom, Karina, J.R. Ron, BernardI hope I spelled everyone's name right...

October 07, 2011 01:47 PM

I was welcomed into Stan's home where I spent two days interviewing Stan and filming his drawing process from start to finish.

In this video, you will see Stan talk about his early career in the Golden and Silver Age of Comics, what helped him achieve his goals, and stories of how his career unfolded. You will learn about the mediums he uses, his techniques, and much more!

October 06, 2011 05:36 PM

I love witch faces with human realistic human detail. This one (above) looks like William Gainnes, the former publisher of Mad.


Here's (above) some artsy paper bag masks (above) combined with cardboard bikini parts. This looks like it could be a B52s cover.


Niiiice! This would make a terrific mass market plaster Halloween sculpture. The site I got it from called it a Whitman death mask. You don't suppose they meant Walt Whitman? But he didn't look like this.


I wonder why nobody ever made a mask out of Anthony Perkins' mom (above) in "Psycho." Come to think of it, why are there no Hitchcock masks?


Man, that red mask (above) is great! You could paint your face like that, but it would be a lot of work.

Above, an angular kid costume.



This gangster costume (above) isn't bad, either. Wouldn't it be great to have a real, well-made suit like this (minus the mask)? You could wear it all year round.



Ha! NOW we're talking! THIS (above) is a Halloween costume...or if it isn't, it doesn't matter.


Hmmmm...or maybe it's this one (above). Geez...decisions, decisions!


I don't know what this is (above), but it's interesting.

October 06, 2011 06:53 AM

I just saw the second installment of Ken Burns' documentary about prohibition. There was a lot in there that I didn't know before, and it raised some interesting questions. For example, whatever happened to neighborhood bars?

When I was a kid they were all over the place. In some neighborhoods you could find a bar on almost every corner.  They weren't especially rowdy, in fact they were sort of "family" bars, but singing and shouting would spill out into the streets on some nights, and occasionally you'd see falling down drunks trying to make their way home at night.



If you lived in the neighborhood saloon era, that institution would have seemed as permanent as motherhood, but the saloons are mostly gone now, as are cigarettes and men's hats. Things change. Drunkenness was once seen as romantic and funny. Drunks were known as jovial philosophers and truth tellers, and were on the cutting edge of the jazz era. Nowadays they're considered so....so yesterday.



Burns' documentary probably wants us to draw comparisons with today's War on Drugs. I don't smoke marijuana but I wish it would be made legal so we could put to rest all the fuss that's made about it. More serious drugs are another matter, though. If they become widespread we'll have a permanent underclass in this country, and nobody wants that.



The philosopher inside me says that on principal people have a right to destroy themselves, and that I should just mind my own business. The practical side of me says that numbers matter. A few people taking serious drugs is just an expression of an alternative lifestyle: a lot of people doing the same thing is a major threat to the stability of society.



My own philosophy about the War on Drugs (hard drugs, that is) is that it's worth fighting, even if it ultimately can't be won. Sometimes a long fight is necessary just to prevent things from getting worse than they are, and winning or losing isn't the point.



Will this problem ever be resolved? My guess is that it will, probably within a few decades.  The time will come when serious drugs just aren't considered fashionable anymore. When hard rock and hippies recede into the past, the drugs and the romantic view of them that came out of that culture will recede with them. Hard drugs will diminish, just like saloons and cigarettes did.



Maybe the real menace of this type lies in the future. Imagine an electronic brain stimulator that, at the push of a button, floods the pleasure centers of the brain with the absolute ultimate sensation of pleasure. If you think about it, nothing could ever induce you to stop pushing a button like that. No alternative could offer a higher reward. You'd push it til you starved to death.

October 06, 2011 01:13 AM

Hey if you've bought any of the colorful t shirts in the store and wanna be a model in my next ad, send me a photo of you wearing one.Thank Alex for his wonderful 3d store magic. And thank Ella below, Dad just above and Layla at the top of the page.Here is what we have in stock ready to go:Blen and Kubercheebie womens: 6-M 2-XLBlen and Kubercheebie mens: 1-S, 5-M, 3-XL, 5-XXLGeorge Liquor

October 04, 2011 10:48 PM

I'll put some more production art and rough animation tests later in the week.Meanwhile here's an interview about t with Amid on Cartoon Brew:http://www.cartoonbrew.com/tv/exclusive-john-k-talks-about-his-simpsons-opening.html#more-50701I also have a longer version of the same interview that I can put up.

October 03, 2011 09:18 PM

Hi folksI wrote the forward to a book about Bob, Tom and Chuck McKimson.Does anybody have any original art from their cartoons, storyboards, comics, backgrounds, coloring books etc that you could scan to be printed in the book?You would get an acknowledgment and the world of cartoon fans would owe you everlastingly.

October 02, 2011 07:30 PM

Michael Sporn just blogged about "Modern Sketch," a Chinese cartoon magazine originating in Shanghai in the years 1934 - 1937. I followed his link and was amazed to find a graphically sophisticated magazine, one that I'd consider subscribing to if it was still being published today. I had no idea that China, or at least the Chinese artists in Shanghai, were so hip to the trends in Europe and America.

By the way, is that bucktoothed guy on the cover...me? It could be a Chinese caricature of of what they regard as the typical pickle-nose Westerner. Or maybe I'm a strange physical type that appears again and again in every generation.


Northern China was invaded by Japan while the magazine was still being published in the South. Some of the references to the war are heart-rending. I don't know what the couple above are saying, but the thought of love and charm in the midst of chaos is interesting. Are these people crazy, or did they make a zen decision to enjoy what may be their last hours on Earth?


Haw! A nice, Rapidograph-style drawing of a formal dinner...a nice reminder of what can be achieved with pen and paper.

Here's (below) the site that Michael referenced for his blog. Thanks to Greg Kelly for finding it!

http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/modern_sketch/ms_essay01.html

Michael's site:

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/

October 02, 2011 08:30 AM

October 02, 2011 03:51 AM

HOWIE POST DOES STARLET OHARA STYLEBTW, something fun is happening tomorrow. I'll tell you about it after it happens. Maybe you'll find it on your own.

October 01, 2011 10:56 PM

TV ANNOUNCER (VO): "Not Godzilla, not King Kong, but gigantic women as tall as skyscrapers wander the streets of our great city! Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they want? Scientists are baffled, and the police are powerless to stop them! All we can say for sure, is that they seem to be searching for something....but for what?"


TV ANNOUNCER (VO): "They're peeping in windows..."


TV ANNOUNCER (VO): "...scouring rooftops...."

September 30, 2011 07:44 PM

I recently got two very interesting comments: one by Brian regarding early childhood, and one by Roberto regarding the best way to pass a difficult AP language course, which I assume is French. I'm no expert in either of these subjects, but this is a theory site, so I feel obligated to take a stab at it. I'll tackle the language question first, and reply to Brian in another post..


 Of course pigeon won't give students a love for the language. You need first rate literature and rhetoric for that. To heck with a steady diet of "Paul, open the window please." Students need to learn exciting things too, things like...like "La Marseillaise." YouTube has an excerpt of that song that was used in "Casablanca." Embedding isn't allowed, so check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM-E2H1ChJM&feature=related




Here's (above) the same anthem sung more clearly, and with English subtitles. Boy, there's a big disconnect between the way the language is written and the way it sounds. No wonder students have trouble with it!



I love the French. They have a spirit that's bracing and unique, and which is exemplified by this amazing song (above) by Edith Piaf. Piaf delivers her nasal sounds and her "R's" like a master. The language is too often dumbed down to make it easier for foreigners to learn. I prefer it full strength, like it is here (but I would only enforce it that way in French 102).

If the video won't play, then click on this link to hear it on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/Q3Kvu6Kgp88

September 30, 2011 07:39 PM

I'm proud of the way I brought up my kids. From my point of view my kids had a near ideal childhood immersed as they were in Shakespeare, Dickens, science, Kurtzman's Mad, Sid Caesar, Ernie Kovacs, Monty Python, Mr. Bean, Clampett and all that. Imagine my shock when Mike showed me this article (excerpt above) from The Onion, which claimed that kids raised that way led shabby, friendless lives, which would almost certainly culminate in depression and suicide. Okay, I exaggerate, but only a little.

Let's try another excerpt from the article (below) (click to enlarge):




Imagine my greater shock when I showed the article to my adult daughter, and she agreed with it. She said she did have trouble making friends in grammar school because nobody her own age read anything she read, or even showed any interest in it. She was glad for what she still thinks was a better than average early education, but she said it came at a  price, definitely a price. Man, I felt terrible!

So what am I to make of this? Am I a bum?

Read the whole article at The Onion site:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/cool-dad-raising-daughter-on-media-that-will-put-h,26132/

September 27, 2011 05:32 AM

to tide you overI haven't posted much lately because I have been working on a short secret projectwatch for it soonassistant animation by Tommy and JojoSlick camera moves by AlexStory by Tom Minton and meDesign and animation by meFurry voices by Steve and Auralynn*Explanation of techniques:Adult Swim asked me to do a few short shorts in completely different styles using different characters.So I

September 22, 2011 08:45 PM

My computer's fixed!!!! Many, many thanks to Steve Worth for the repair! He not only fixed the machine, but he talked me through every step so I can do the next fix myself. Now I can put up photo stories and comics just like real bloggers do!

I'll try to do a photo story tomorrow!

BTW: Thanks to Kellie and Anonymous for the useful repair tips!

September 22, 2011 06:23 AM

If you are a fan of caricature, You have to get this!!!! John Kascht Is one of my early influences and one of the greatest professional working caricaturists today. It is great to see how he works, where he lives, an amazing tour of his studio and his rough sketches to finish colors. Check it out. http://abovebeyondjohnkascht.com/

September 21, 2011 04:12 PM

Good Lord!!! This is the solar flare that made headlines when it escaped from the sun this June. It's amazing that the sun can lose that kind of mass so frequently and still continue to burn for billions of years.


Above, a peek into a sunspot. The little pieces of yellow "corn" around the rim are not currently understood. Click to enlarge.


Here's (above) the Sleeping Beauty Galaxy. The outer rim of dark gases rotates in the opposite direction of the stars! Why? Who knows? Maybe we're seeing the aftermath of two galaxies that collided.



Here's (above) a detail of the Orion Nebula, shot with the Spitzer Space telescope, which trails the Earth's orbit around the sun. It's farther away from the Earth than it's better known relative, the Hubble, and only takes pictures in the infra-red spectrum.


Above, an even smaller detail of Orion. Be sure to click to enlarge.


Above, what is thought to be evidence of seasonal running water on Mars. The water is believed to be just under the surface in this area. It's puzzling, because even the summers are pretty cold on Mars. Since Mars isn't very geologically active, where does the heat come from that melts the water?


If you were standing in an eroded crater on Mars this (above) is what you might see. It was taken by one of the Mars rovers. This is an impressive picture when seen large.


 What's the name of the nearest star? The answer in grade school textbooks is Alpha Centauri (above), but that's not exactly true.

Actually, I knew that even when I was a kid...I liked to read about astronomy, so I knew things like that. Once a commissioner of schools came to visit and he asked the kids in my class a few general knowledge questions. One of them was, what's the closest star to Earth? I shouted "Proxima Centauri!" and the commissioner frowned and called on another student, the class goody-goody, who answered "Alpha Centauri." I was humiliated in front of all the girls in class, but I was right. Alpha Centauri is a system consisting of a double star and one stand alone sun, all orbiting around a common center, and the closest of them all is Proxima.


This immensely disappointing picture of Saturn (above) was taken by Cassini. It reveals outward-reaching spokes of feint gas plumes, possibly from the moon, Encelydus (spelled right?).  I couldn't bring myself to publish the picture large...I almost didn't publish it at all. I like to think of Saturn as having clean, round rings, and the plumes bugger that up. I'll make an effort to put this picture out of my mind, and I apologize if I disillusioned anyone here.


Aaaargh! Another sad picture (above)! It's America's last space shuttle returning to Earth from the point of view of The International Space Station. The past generation of shuttles simply weren't big enough to carry large payloads into space.


Planetary astronomers are interested in all weather, including the weather on Earth. Here (above) a tornado attempts to form over a farm house in Kansas. I can only imagine how the people inside were reacting to this. The streaks on the pictures are wildly energetic hailstones.

BTW: All the pictures here are from the site called "Astronomy Picture of the Day," URL on the sidebar.

September 21, 2011 06:44 AM

Dark Horse just published an anthology of stories from "Crime Does Not Pay," for my money one of the best adult comic books ever. I skimmed my friend Mike's copy of the book, and I got the impression that the book's stories were chosen for the writing, and not the artwork, but maybe I'm wrong. Jack Cole used to draw for this comic, and so did Paul Gustafson.


You never heard of Gustafson? That's a sample of his work above. He had a real cinematic style. How do you like that second panel where we see ordinary pedestrians waiting for a light to change from the vantage point of some evil force lurking in the shadows?


The comic was edited by Charles Biro and Bob Wood in the early forties. In real life, Wood lived the life he wrote about and ended up beating his wife to death with a steam iron. He went to prison for it, and was murdered by another inmate.


"Crimes by Women" looks like a pretty good title too, to judge by the cover. There were a lot of crime titles in those days.


Look at that policeman (above)! He looks like he was drawn by Kirby, but I think the drawing is credited to someone else.


"Murder Incorporated" (above)  looks like an interesting comic....


....as does "Crime Reporter!" I wish I could read these comics.


Geez, here (above) we have the shocking immediacy of seeing a man shot at point blank range from the point of view of the shooter.


I hate to seem like a prude, but maybe these comics were too strong for kids. They make crime and sadism look exciting in a way that EC comics never did.

How do you like the far away look (above) on the stabber's face? 'Probably an editor's change.

September 20, 2011 06:36 AM

Yep! More early newspaper strips! I thought I'd free associate on some surreal (if that's the term) pictures that Allan Holtz recently published in his blog, "Strippers Guide (link in the sidebar)."




Surrealism was all over the comics page at the turn of the century. Here's (above) a newspaper strip from 1907 which was all about weird role reversals. Wood whittles kids, cigars smoke people, flies trap humans with "human paper"....it was all kinda clever. I don't know if you could get away with that now. Today surreal subjects are associated with drugs.


Believe it or not sequential comic stories were somewhat common in European newspapers and magazines at least as far back as the 1840s. How far back depends on how you define the term "comics." The strip above is from Punch, 1868.


One of the things that prevented early comics from having mass appeal was that they were initially used as a kind of editorial cartoon, for the purpose of ridiculing political and cultural opponents. The medium never really took off till editors began to realize that comics could be family fare, funny in their own right, like the "Jocko" strip above (date: 1900).

I'll digress back to surrealism to hypothesize that Edward Lear (above) might have created surrealism way back when in the mid-19th Century. Lots of people drew weird before Lear, but he showed that weirdness could cross the line into fine art. Aaaargh! Come to think of it, Hieronymus Bosch and others did that too...I guess surrealism is a movement that has many fathers.


While I'm on the subject of Lear, what do you think of this painting (above) of Masada that he did in 1868? Imagine a cartoonist like Lear pulling off this kind of realism! Click to enlarge.


Here's (above) Lear painting trees in the style of...dare I say it?...Bill Peet!

September 16, 2011 07:03 AM

John K is a big fan of the early Terrytoons, and of Bill Nolan's "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit" cartoons (sample, above).  He's always talking about this stuff, and his enthusiasm is infectious. Now I've got the bug. Have you seen any of these cartoons lately? if not, you're missing out.

A word of caution: If you're not used to these old cartoons you might be put off by the slow, deliberate way that people talk, and by the lack of story and character. There's a reason they're like that, but writing about it would take more space than I have, so I'll have to cover it in another post.



Boy, old cartoons (above) like the one above are really cartoony. The artwork is uneven, though. The artist who did the crude Red Riding Hood at the start is obviously not in the same league as the guy who did the hilarious marriage sequence at the end. My guess is that some artists were hired because they could draw, and others because they were funny, even if they weren't exactly terrific draughtsmen.

The skipping Red Riding Hood scene does have one thing going for it, though. It was obviously intended to be funny. Scripts in the modern animation industry very rarely intend to be funny. Clever, mildly humorous, wry, topical, hip, etc....but hardly ever  funny. The director gave the animator a chance to do a funny skip here and he blew it...but he did get a chance, and that's something few current animators get.



Take a look at the "Uncle Tom's Cabin"-type cartoon above. Right after the start Topsy comes in doing a funny bounce. We cut to her hippo sister doing a funny run, then the two sisters do a duet. The duet wasn't all that funny but, hey, two out of three isn't a bad score.

The point I want to make is that this cartoon is structured to provide plenty of opportunity for funny animation. When these cartoons were made, funny drawings moving in a funny way was almost universally regarded as the purpose of animation. What ever happened to that idea? When's the last time you saw anything like that in a current cartoon?



By the late 30s the animation industry seemed to have grown smug. The backgrounds got more realistic, the characters acquired personality, every cartoon told a clear story, and animators could confidently draw almost whatever they could imagine. That's all great, but what happened to funny? Cartoons increasingly became humorous and professional rather than funny. Thank God for Clampett and Avery, who bucked the trend and insisted on funny at any cost.

That's a Clampett black and white above: "Porky's Surprise Party." Clampett believed in character AND funny. He refused to choose between the two, reasoning that you could have both. And you can.

September 14, 2011 08:20 AM

New versions of classic EC and Creepy Magazine masks seem to be in this year. I kinda like the one above.

Niiiice! I think it's (above) made out of wood!


The Crypt Keeper (above)! Very nice!


Variations of this mask (above) have been around since I was a kid. No wonder! It's a classic!


Haw! Above, a sort of Rankin and Bass witch!


Above, a good sidekick for an evil mastermind.